I didn't realize it at the moment, but I think I sent my poor students into an existential tailspin, which shames me a bit because they're all so young and fresh-faced that I hesitate to burden them with harsh realities before they must face them down. It's like telling a four-year-old that there's no Santa Claus - clearly he will at some point know this just as you do, but why ruin a good thing while he's got it? It's not the hanging that bothers us; it's the waiting till dawn that really hurts.
In any case, I'm supposed to be working and alas I am not, so I thought I'd wax philosophical in my own shallow, uninformed way for a bit in this space. I'm still thinking more consciously about how I live in the world, how I exist within it and against it. It seems that at the root of all humanity lies paradox and this both bothers and comforts me (quite paradoxically... that was so lame). Perhaps it's because I'm taking a series of courses this term steeped in theory that my mind is going where it is, but one of my professors asked us to define what it is we "do" as English professors. My immediate response in my head was, oh sure, I can do that, I've been thinking about it for years. But then it happened; I couldn't necessarily quantify or qualify it. In no way was I able to give a succinct job description. It's all quite nebulous:
I teach English [that's easy, but why do we need whole courses in our native language in order to understand it?] and that entails writing instruction [how do you teach someone to write well? Is it grammar, mechanics, spelling, and punctuation? Is it tone, appropriate language, the 5-paragraph essay model?], rhetorical instruction [how does one teach this? Is there a tried and true method or formula for how arguments develop, break down, work or do not work, fail or pass?], how to do research [this is the most entertaining element of my job, because I myself don't have the answer; it is ever only a haphazard experience of fumbling in the dark and hoping to find something useful], documentation style instruction [shockingly, this is the most 'objective' part of what I teach and yet it's the one thing they never, ever "get"], reading aloud [why do they need me for this activity?], discussion of the readings and instructions [is there any conceivable way to validate this and make it concrete?], response to the world of popular culture, politics, religion, family, economics, ... [too long a list], the teaching of literary terminology and critical reading techniques [why? I don't believe in half of them myself and every time I teach them it's a bit different].
None of the aforementioned accounts for the additional parts of the job such as social work [once I had a student who ended up homeless and the mom in me could not abide this fact; I went to the university, helped him get a case worker, a job, and a place to live], mothering [having to tell people to be on time or you'll punish them; having to scold them about using their phones to text message in class; needing rules for people over 18 such as "do not sleep through class or I will count you absent"; having to take roll at all; having to quiz them to make sure they read their assignments], and my least favorite aspect of my job description: always having to be the bigger person. It's my job to always take the high road, to deal with abuses and ill behaviors from a detached, reasonable place and pretend I like each student equally when I don't. Some of them I so perfectly adore, some I like just fine, many are merely faces and papers whom I have little opinion either way, and a handful of them I would slap and kick out of my class if I knew I wouldn't get fired for it.
If I had to justify what it is I DO in the world I suppose it would be this: I try to lead and cheer on those who seek knowledge in the hope that they will find it, go out into the world and resist the urge to be one of the sheep. It's an entirely subjective and nebulous role, but it feels like an important one. Whether by fate or my own doing, I'm here right now and I have been given or have earned said power, and I plan to keep using it the best I know how.
At least until the blind man shows up to tell me that I've been mistaken all this while.
1 comment:
There’s a book by naturalist philosopher Daniel Dennet, called “Freedom Evolves” which addresses the question of “if we live in a materialistic (read: non supernatural) universe – how can we have free will?”
He makes a case that living in a DETERMINISTIC universe (“determined” by nature/physics/etc.) isn’t the same thing as saying we live FATALISTIC universe (only ONE possible outcome, based on those physical laws)
From there, he explains that while our choices may be made based in part on our genes, and “memes” (social mores, learned behavior, etc.) that’s still “more” free will than, say, a dog, who has more free will than a fish, who has more free will than… I dunno, a turd.
Of course, for some people, this doesn’t count as “free will”, because there’s no essential “me” sitting inside the "Cartesian Theater" in my head, controlling my body like a Japanese animation-style robot. Dennet answers these folks by explaining that, just because we know there’s no such thing as Cupid, that doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as romantic love – we just have to change our definition of what such a thing is.
Also, he calls out the “quantum consciousness” types (who explain consciousness as being a mystical bi-product of quantum mechanics) by saying that “indeterministic” (quantum) phenomenon doesn’t fare any better in explaining free will, because if the “self” isn’t governed by physical/natural laws, there’s nothing to keep me from shifting suddenly into some pathological sociopath (for instance). Or, for that matter, jumping up into the air and flying off into space (since my behavior wouldn’t be bound by deterministic laws, like, y’know, gravity)
I jibe with that – which makes me a heretic to the religious fundamentalists; conversely, I think there’s a bandwidth of human experience which can best be described as “spiritual”, which makes me a crackpot to naturalist philosophers.
When it comes to my philosophy of “free will”, I’m a free-agent!
As far as your difficulty in explaining what you “do”, it probably has to do with it being an ideal “right-brained” job as opposed to washing dishes/crunching numbers/scheduling (shudder) commercials.
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